Bitstream: Business tidbits for all

Stressed Out?

A study conducted by Polaris Marketing Research found that men were most stressed out by work, while women were most stressed about … everything.

According to BusinessNewsDaily, men were more likely to cite work as a major source of angst. Women attributed their angst to financial issues, lack of time, family problems, living situation and relationship issues.

The study found that men exercised, played video games and had a drink to unwind. Women were more varied in their own stress-relief tactics, reporting that they sleep, listen to music, surf the Internet, socialize, pray, read a book, write in a journal or eat their favorite comfort foods to decompress.

The Complicated Sedentary Life

It turns out that sitting is, actually, really killing you. You may have seen the scary infographic that’s been getting posted and reposted to Facebook.

According to PubMed.gov, sitting for six hours a day (or longer) increases your risk of heart disease by 64 percent. And ABC reported that a lot of us sit for as long as 15 hours a day. Sitting this much slows metabolism, raises cholesterol and builds insulin resistance (which can lead to diabetes — that really bad kind). You also start losing up to 1 percent of bone mass per year if you’re doing this kind of sitting on a daily or regular basis.

Jezebel, a women’s blog, reports some hope, though. To reduce these risks, they write, you only need to do two things: Stand up once an hour and get 30 minutes of exercise a day.

Business Violations

If this hasn’t happened to you yet, consider yourself lucky: MSNBC reports that across the country employers and colleges are requiring applicants to hand over their Facebook logins and passwords, in order to see everything you keep behind the privacy screens. Or they’re asking interviewees to log in to their accounts in front of them, asking potential hires to go through their profiles to make sure they’re not hiding anything disagreeable. Some other companies are using spy companies such as UDilligence and Varsity Monitor to spy on applicants.

In Maryland, the Department of Corrections asked applicants for their logins and passwords until the American Civil Liberties Union stepped in. The problem, reports MSNBC, is that many of these Facebook searches are voluntary; nervous applicants, wanting to score points in an interview, comply with an interviewer’s request to see their private information.

While many find the practice objectionable, instances of this kind of privacy-invasion are popping up all over the country. According to MSNBC, some people are calling for federal lawmakers to step in, but in the meantime, you should know you’re not required to give out any of your information.

Sleep Working

The Centers for Disease Control recently conducted research on the “most sleep-deprived careers,” according to LiveScience.

Among the top five professions getting the least amount of sleep are police officers, economists and physicians. Social workers, computer programmers and secretaries made that top-10 list, too.

If you’re a fan of sleep, you might consider one of these, which are reported to be the jobs where people get the most sleep: hairstylists, sales representatives, bartenders, construction workers, athletes, landscapers, engineers, pilots and teachers.

What Would You Give Up To Work From Home?

We know working from home has benefits: money saved on gas expenses and wear and tear on your car, avoiding heavy-breathers or loud-chewers in neighboring cubicles, spending more time caring for your kids. And it’s been proven to be a boon to employers too — studies show that many people who work from home happily, work harder and for longer hours.

The diagram to the left shows what LiveScience.com discovered when it surveyed 2,600 people over the age of 18 about what they would trade if only they could telecommute.

Beat them at your own game

If you’ve ever applied for a job online, you know the likelihood of hearing anything back is infinitesimal. Companies receive hundreds of useless resumes from people submitting to anywhere for anything, and therefore many applications get ignored.

But the Wall Street Journal reports that you can beat the resume-sorting bots by loading what you submit with keywords from the job description. If, for instance, you’re applying for a bank-teller job, make sure you’ve got “cash” and “cash-handling” in your resume’s job descriptions (instead of, or in addition to, “financial management” or “customer service”).

The systems, of course, have flaws, lacking a discerning ability to pick out good candidates from bad. Relying solely on keywords can only tell so much about a candidate. “One small error, such as listing the name of a former employer after the years worked there, instead of before, can ruin a great candidate’s chances,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

Your Office Nemesis

Chances are there’s probably someone in your office you hate working with. If your strategy for dealing with this person is to ignore him or her, the Harvard Business Review suggests another tack: Try working more closely with this colleague.

According to the HBR, experts offer these coping methods: “If there is someone who is annoying or abrasive, don’t think about how the person acts, think about how you react. It’s far more productive to focus on your own behavior because you can control it.”

“One of the best ways to get to like someone you don’t like is to work on a project that requires coordination,” Robert Sutton, a professor of management science and engineering at Stanford University and the author of Good Boss, Bad Boss and The No Asshole Rule, told the Review. By working together, the article reports, you can better understand your colleague and perhaps even develop some empathy. “You might feel compassion instead of irritation,” says another expert.

Other tips include not talking smack about your office enemy, providing feedback to this person — maybe she’s not aware she’s difficult to work with, and there are diplomatic ways of talking to people about these things — and, finally, just stop caring. Remember what they say: When you let someone make you mad, you’re giving that person power over you.